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Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Falling slinky

When a slinky is suspended in mid air until it reaches equilibrium and then dropped, it falls in a very peculiar manner.
The bottom of the slinky would appear to hover in mid-air until the turns start stacking up from the top and eventually reach the bottom.

A slow motion video has been made by scientists to help us analyze the motion of the slinky quite nicely.

Mike Wheatland from Australia’s University of Sydney explains :

When you let go of the slinky at the top, “there’s a finite time for that information (i.e. signal) about that change to get to the bottom of the slinky.”